Dave Pollard's chronicle of civilization's collapse, creative works and essays on our culture. A trail of crumbs, runes and exclamations along my path in search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

…But Chip Morningstar Gets Complexity: Chip says: “This is the nature of big complicated plans: they have lots of details (that’s what makes them big and complicated) and they leave lots out (because, the world being the complex thing that it is, no matter how much detail you give, it’s never enough to completely describe everything relevant). Plus, the more details and complexities there are, the more opportunities you have to make mistakes. As the number of elements you are juggling grows large, the probability of significant errors approaches certainty.” His answer is resilience, rather than a lot of planning and forecasting. To which I would add, improvisation, rather than the folly of attempting to preempt risk. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link.

Whole Foods Not Telling the Whole Story: Although there is no question Whole Foods products are better for your health, Field Maloney at Slate points out that a few large organic suppliers, often far away, dominate the market, and the prices you pay are out of reach of many who would like to eat better. If you really want to buy local, healthy, organic products from small sustainable farms, you’ll likely have to do your own research and set up your own community network.

Google Earth — From the Driver’s Seat: Microsoft’s new beta Virtual Earth allows you to steer your own route and see Seattle or San Francisco from the perspective of a driver (or walker). The shots are jerky rather than continuous, but it’s an intriguing start. Thanks to David Gurteen for the link.

Software That Helps You Visualize Hunches and Mutations: If you’ve ever tried Google’s or Picasa’s “I feel lucky” buttons for your searches or photo enhancements, you appreciate that the iteration that leads to improvement is a combination of hunches (based on instinct, but largely incremental) and mutations (trying something wacky, which usually fails, but sometimes succeeds spectacularly). Wired reports on new software that may one day make this combination of approaches easier to do. Thanks to Innovation Weekly for the link.

Fun and Inspiration

Juggling One-Upmanship: A few weeks ago I linked to comedian Chris Bliss’ closing juggling routine. Now an experienced juggler, Jason Garfield, has duplicated the act using five balls instead of three and thrown in some extra acrobatics. Thanks to Chris Corrigan for the link.

Beautiful Photos from China: Although its environment is under siege from reckless human activity, China still boasts some astonishing beauty as these photos by Feng Jiang of University of York attest. Photo above is from this site. Thanks to Jeremy Heigh for the link.

Jeremy also points us to this week’s quote of the week, an old Akan proverb: A good soup attracts chairs. Jeremy adds: Want attention? Focus on your recipe.

Bonus quote for the week, via Kathy at Creating Passionate Users, from Jason Fried of 37Signals at the SXSW conference, on how to develop software (or any other product):

“Learn to do the development yourself. You’ll be forced to build something simple because you don’t know how to do the complex stuff…Make it up as you go along. You’re in a much better place to make a decision whenyou’re in it, than when you’re planning…We don’t use functional specs…we use stories.”